In Search Of.... Milk and Cereal

Everybody knows that cereal is the most popular breakfast in America today. Many people have multiple boxes, or perhaps if you're poor and/or cheap... bags, of the stuff. ("Our cereal comes in a can.")

However, have you ever thought why we pour milk on our cereal each morning? Well I have! Well... actually I haven't really. Somebody I know has and mentioned it to me; and then I got to thinking and couldn't find the answer at first; and I got a little frustrated and I threw my bag of Fruity-Os across the kitchen and then went outside and kicked a tree. Excuse me...

So, I thought I would do a little more research and find out. Knowing the history of cereal will not change your life in any dramatic way, except for the fact that you'll be that much more of a dork for reading this. If you tell a friend, then there's no hope for you. I'm already a lost cause because I did the research. Let's begin...

One hundred and fifty years ago, when the world was still a burning ball of molten lava, Americans were mostly eating pork, beef, or chicken for their breakfasts. They would get up when the cock crowed, grab him, lop his head off, and eat him along with Babe and Elsie (and the moral is... it's got to be good). In those days, there was no PETA, and everybody was happier for it.

So the English breakfast was still reigning supreme. You would have thought the frickin' queen still ran things. A traditional English breakfast consists of fried eggs, fried bacon, fried bread (not toast), fried sausage, fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes, fried potatoes (sometimes with fried cabbage, known together as bubble and squeak), and baked beans. (Baked? How did that get in there?) Sometimes there would also be black pudding, which is basically congealed animal blood, animal fat, and other animal by-products, stuffed into an animal intestine. Delish! Once again, no PETA and they were happy.

Anywhoo, so you can see why, with a breakfast high in protein and incredibly lacking in any sort of fiber; many people suffered from debilitating gastrointestinal disorders. And since sitting on the shitter all day long is not good for the economy, the government stepped in. Actually they didn't, the government used to stay out of personal, little, day-to-day trivialities like this and gay marriage. Who cares who is eating sausage anyway? But I digress...

In the 1860s, rather than the government, there were still lovely, special interest groups that felt that they knew what was best for everybody else, and they were going to make them do it, by golly! The temperance movement, known mostly for being thoroughly against alcoholic beverages, also didn't really like the loud screaming emanating from the outhouses all over town. It frightened them, and caused women in girdles to faint. They also claimed that when the unmentionable excrement finally made its debutant, that it made their red hats wilt. So they began to push for all Americans to eat more healthy foods.

Really smart people thought that if animals eat grains, and we eat animals, then why for not we should be eating grains then a-durrrrr! After all, animals eating grains works out really well for them right? They don't end up dying prematurely and ending up on someone's plate at all, do they?

The first breakfast cereal, Granula, was invented in 1863. Rather than being named after an elderly vampire (wah wah!), this name derived from the granulates that were formed when grains were processed. The inventor was J.C. Jackson, a staunch vegetarian (they didn't have militant ones then -- once again, no PETA) was operator of the Dansville Sanitorium in New York. The cereal was basically heavy nuggets of bran, the outer husk of grain that is removed when making flour. It had such a high fiber content, that just by looking at it, you would drop a load in your pants. Despite this fact, the cereal never really caught on for some reason. In actuality, it was far too inconvenient. It needed to be soaked overnight before they were tender enough to eat. (That's important, remember that!)

Granula did, however, spark the interest of two separate individuals, C.W. Post and W. K. Kellogg. They both began serving similar thin, baked nutritious dough to patients in their hospitals. And thus the origin of horrible hospital food is explained. The End.

Wait a minute?!? Milk and cereal... Right!

Well, in 1865, Mr. Post developed an item called Postum, a hot drink made of cereal mixed with milk. (Another point to remember!) Cooking the incredibly hard bran, made it easier to eat. However, there was no way to package and market this sloppy, cooked stuff in those days, and Post was a businessman and wanted to make money so he could afford his coke habit. He just loved that solid coal residue. Post later developed Grape Nuts, which we know today as the cereal made from rocks, because he was temporarily insane and forgot to add any grapes or nuts.

In 1887, Mr. Kellogg with the help of his brother, Anthony Hopkins ... I mean J.H. Kellogg, invented a ground-up wheat, oat, and cornmeal biscuit for the patients at the Battle Creek Sanitorium.

Fun Fact! (See, this is like a box of cereal) Battle Creek, Michigan is named after a battle that occurred between a land surveyor and two Indians (there wasn't political correctness back then either, but if you would rather... Native Americans.) So, basically three people. Some battle. But who wants to live in Argument Creek? Battle Creek, now that's got pizzazz! Anywhatzit...

This Kellogg cereal was named Granola (it was originally Granula, but was changed after a lawsuit. No PETA, but still lawyers.) Kellogg later accidentally left a batch of boiled wheat soaking overnight, and rolled them into flakes in the morning. In 1906, the same was done with corn, and Kellogg's Corn Flakes were born.

Many of these cereals, fed to patients at breakfast, were accompanied by a healthy glass of milk. Instead of looking like a big doof and eating a spoonful of dried flakes, the milk was poured on top of the cereal and enjoyed together. And that's why we put milk on our cereal to this day.

Of course, it could also be simply due to the fact that throughout history man has boiled any of a number of different kinds of oats with milk, because water did not always come from a clean and reliable source, and milk was freshest in the morning, when the cows had just been milked. But which explanation did you have more fun reading? Yeah, me too! I was kind of pissed when I found the second answer, after researching the more elaborate one.